Swiss Army Man – Movie Review
Swiss Army Man is a film directed by the Daniels.
It stars a depressed, and beat up Hank, played by Paul Dano stranded on an island, he is about to commit suicide, until he discovers and obtains the corpse of Daniel Radcliffe. The farting corpse of Daniel Radcliffe.
From the first 5 minutes of the film, I had a massive grin on my face. This is a neat little inventive and quirky film. The opening credits rival any music videos of today. This isn’t a conventional film either, reminds of the works of Luis Bunuel, like The Discreet Charm of The Bourgeoise. Swiss Army Man like that film feels like a dream. It is a bit more structured and self aware than a Bunuel film however.
The first thing worth of note is the film’s score, it’s not special or anything, but how it serves the film’s dreamlike atmosphere makes it memorable. The characters sing along with the score at moments, Hank does it right before the opening credits. Letting us know, that the film we’re about to watch isn’t going to take itself too seriously. Also the fact that the characters are somewhat aware of the non-diegetic elements of the film. The script and dialogue alludes to it as well.
Daniel Radcliffe should be proud of this performance. Acting useless isn’t as easy as everyone things. Radcliffe exhibits enough emotion and lack of emotion makes his perfomance wotrthwhile. The way he speaks, the lack of movement in his eyes, it’s all very special and the script along with Radcliffe’s performance lives up to the film’s title. Swiss Army Man, of course a reference to the multi tool known as the Swiss Army Knife. Radcliffe’s body does some of the best and most out of the world things, and it projects the screenwriters creativity. I don’t want to spoil anything, but one of the thing’s Radcliffe’s multi tool body does is use his penis as a compass.
But it’s a bit more than just the physical, Hank’s interactionsa and teachings to the corpse lead to some fantastic existential talk. Where simple everyday things such as pooping are given an explanation, thanks to the corpse’s wacky questions.
I also like the film’s edit. it’s minimalistic and simplistic, they only give you enough information before cutting to a payoff. One of my favorite cuts is when Paul Dano finds some berries all excited, the shot runs for about 4 seconds, and boom we cut to the payoff.
This is a neat film, it takes pevious films of the same genre such as Life of Pi and Cast Away and solidifies itself as one of the best Stranded films. This is one of the best films I’ve seen this year, and it’s just short of a masterpiece. The screenplay did need a few more drafts before being filmed in my opinion as it fizzles out after the 2nd act. However it gains back a lot of those points with it’s cathartic and purifying ending, reminded me of Take Shelter.
